APOD 3.2

January 25th, 2011.                            The Rippled Red Ribbons of SNR 0509.

First seen in 2006, these ripples of a supernova remnant were once again seen late last year.  This photograph was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.  The Hubble used a filter that emitted only the element Hydrogen through, which in turn caused for the reddish coloring of the ripples.  While the reason for the causation of these rings remains unknown, many astronomers have ventured to hypothesize why they have formed.  Many say that they originated due to highly dense concentrations of ejected or impacted gas.  The reason for the bolder center ring is much more certain, as it originated from a type Ia supernova explosion that was thought to occur about 400 years ago.  SNR 0509 lays 160,000 light-years away near the constellation Delphinus and spans for about 23 light-years, which while it is still a huge amount, as we saw from the videos in class this week, in comparison to the universe it is a near insignificant amount.  While much is being learned about these ripples, one mystery still remains.  While it is believed that the explosion of a supernova caused for the formation of the rings, no records of sight of the explosion from Earth when it occurred 400 years ago were ever found.

APOD 3.1

January 20th, 2011.                        The Once and Future Stars of Andromeda

Queen Andromeda was a very interesting constellation in our class since she had many unique features, including her Worm like appearance, her notable star Mira, and her circumpolar feature that allows for the constellation to remain above the horizon 24 hours a day.  Additionally, the constellation contains M31, which we did not talk much about and I hoped to learn of from this APOD.  M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy, is a spiral galaxy located 2.5 million light-years away.  This picture was taken by two satellites, Herschel and XMM-Newton, in a combination of infrared and X-Ray spectrum. The rings of dust contain gaseous reservoirs where many new stars are being formed, however towards the center core, some of the more predominant starts are shown to be coming to the end of their lives.  Not clearly shown in the picture however, is the true size of this great Andromeda Galaxy.  Over twice the size of our own Milky Way, the galaxy stretches over 200,000 light-years across and contains thousands of stars.

APOD 2.8

January 8th, 2011                                          The Helix Nebula

   We have long known about the existence of the Helix Nebula since we learned the constellation Aquarius a few months back, but we never really learned what exactly it was so I figured that this was a fitting APOD choice.  The constellation Aquarius, located approximately 700 light years away, has a sun-like star in its final days. Over the past thousands of years, the star has created NGC 7293, or more commonly known as the Helix Nebula, discovered by Karl Harding in 1824.  This is a typical example of a Planetary Nebula, or an Emission Nebula consisting an expanding glowing shell of ionized gas that is expelled during the final stages of a star's lifespan known as the asymptotic giant branch phase.  The picture shown was taken over 10 hours of exposure time.  The brighter blue insides spans up to 3 light years, but the outer halos give the Nebula a total span of over 6 light years across. The white dot in the center of the Nebula is the sun-like star that allows for all of this to occur.  Recently, much has been learned about the complex geometry of these types of Nebulae but there is no doubt that there is much more to learn about the matter.

Sun Images Links

These are the links to some of the websites I found that had interesting photos of the Sun. Some of them lead to other galleries and some just have the photos and descriptions posted right there.  The first two links also contains some animations and demonstrations. The third link is to a website that has links to pictures of most of the unique sun phenomena.

http://www.windows2universe.org/sun/sun_il.html

http://sungazer.net/images.html

http://www.physics.utah.edu/~app/astro106/sun.html

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/sun-gallery/#/glowing-sun-prominence_6594_600x450.jpg

http://space.about.com/od/sunsol/ig/Sun-Pictures-Gallery.--ry/

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/the_sun.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/29/pictures-of-the-sun_n_775402.html

http://www.solarspace.co.uk/Sun.php

Astro Bio Q2 Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve

                                        Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve (1793-1864)

            Friedrich von Struve was born in Altona Germany in 1793. Son of Jacob Struve, Friedrich fled to Dorpat, Estonia in 1808 to avoid being forced into the German army.  There, he attended the University of Dorpat, from which he graduated in 1810, and was later pronounced Director of the Dorpat Observatory in 1817.  He remained at Dorpat, studying double stars and geodesy until 1839 when he transferred to Pulkowa, Russia to monitor construction of the new central observatory being built.

            Friedrich von Struve was best known for his research on double stars, originally discovered by astronomer William Herschel. A double star is a system of two stars revolving around a common center of gravity. In 1827, Struve published a list of all known double stars to date in what is known as the Catalogus novus stellarum duplicium, which exceeded the research of Herschel and all others who came before him.  Based on the locations of the objects and the times that they were observed which matched the predictions formed by the Dorpat Meridian Circle, Struve was able to carefully measure the constant of aberration and is known as one of the first astronomers to deal with parallax.

            Struve was also one of the first astronomers to deal with interstellar extinction, although he was unable to explain the effect. This term refers to the absorption and scattering of electromagnetic radiation from the view of the observer, and although unable to explain the process, Struve was accurately able to predict the average rate of visual extinction at 1mag per kpc, which is still an accepted value to date.

            Along with these studies, Stuve always held on to his interest in geodetics, or the study of the measurement and representation of Earth, including its gravitational and electromagnetic fields. This led him to founding the Struve Geodetic Arc, or a recording of many triangulations from across the world that allow for accurate estimates of Earths size and shape to be made.

            Despite his admirable dedication to his work and hobbies, Friedrich was at the same time a family man.  In 1815, while teaching at the University of Dorpat, Struve married Emilie Wall. Together they had 12 children, of which only 8 survived early childhood.  After Emilie passed away, Struve remarried to Johanna Bartels, who bore him six more children.  Struve was also very politically involved throughout all of this, and was a strong proponent of the liberalist Constitutional Democratic Party as well as the White Movement.

            Although not as well known as many of his preceding astronomers, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve was clearly a very important member in the progress of astronomical advancement.  His research in the fields of double stars, parallax and aberration, and geodetics clearly paved the way for future research that would continue to advance the modern understanding of our Universe.

Observation 01/06/11

Date: January 6th, 2011
Time: 7:00 P.M.
Location: My Backyard. Northern Sarasota.

While in the morning both Venus and Mercury were present, as the dark of night approached 2 new planets were visible.  Jupiter was located in the southern sky, and although Uranus was supposedly located right next to it I was not able to see it very clearly due to excess lighting around my house.

Observation 01/6/11

Date: January 6th, 2010
Time: 6:00 A.M.
Location: My driveway/Pine View Parking Lot after arriving at school.

In the early morning I could see Venus quite clearly and I think that a fainter Mercury lay near it as they are both coming upon their points of longest elongation very soon.

Observation Winter Break

Location: My Driveway
Date: December 21st, 2010.
Time: 2-3 A.M.


Although I could not attend the observation at Pine View with the class, I still was able to go out and observe the beginning of the Lunar Eclipse from my house.  It was an amazing sight as it is the only eclipse I can ever remember seeing and I am looking forward to seeing a solar eclipse as well.

APOD 2.7

January 5th, 2011.                Eclipsing the Sun

This picture is from the first eclipse of the New Year.  It is a partial solar eclipse, meaning only a fraction of the sun was hidden from sight as the picture clearly depicts.  The photographer of this picture, Thierry Legault, planned very carefully from predictions of the eclipse and decided to travel to Muscat so that he would simultaneously be able to capture two different occurrences. The first and obvious is the partial solar eclipse caused by the Moon passing in front of the Sun, however if you look towards the top left region of the Sun you will see another silhouette. This object happens to be the International Space Station, also passing in front of the Sun at the same time. The Moon and ISS are Earth's two largest satellites, making this a unique occurrence.  The black shadow in the lower right portion of the Sun is a common Sun Spot, however as you can see it is quite large as it is comparable to the ISS shadow.  One problem with the APOD is that it provides a link to a site that is supposed to have a video however the video does not play.

Q2 Astro Bio Sources

Works Cited

"Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve." Astronomy. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://pvastro0714.blogspot.com/2008/01/friedrich-georg-wilhelm-struve.html>.

"Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve." NNDB: Tracking the Entire World. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.nndb.com/people/202/000097908/>.

"Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Von Struve - Definition." Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - WordIQ Dictionary. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Friedrich_Georg_Wilhelm_von_Struve>.

"Struve, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Von - Britannica Philippines Struve, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Von Article." Britannica - Encyclopedia Online. Britannica Philippines Encyclopedia. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.britannica.com.ph/astronomy/struve-friedrich-georg-wilhelm-von-379741.html>.

"Struve, Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Von (1793-1864)." The Worlds of David Darling. Web. 05 Jan. 2011. <http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/S/Struve_FGW.html>.

The Gale Reference Library was asking for a password to use so I will also be using that source once I figure

 out how to access it.